Internet service providers (ISPs) provide connections to the Internet for millions of customers, and the untapped market is still substantial. ISPs today may offer one or more of cable, phone, and Internet service. In addition to providing the underlying cable, phone, or Internet service, most ISPs also provide a host of other services to their customers, such as email, personalized homepages, web page hosting, and other content and/or value-added resources. Quality of Service (QoS) is an important determinant of customer satisfaction with an ISP. Customers today have come to expect high-quality service virtually all the time. If expected QoS is not met, customers expect the problem to be fixed promptly. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons ISPs are often unwilling or unable to adequately address customers' complaints when they have arisen.
Of course, no matter how hard an ISP tries, technical, and other problems, occur, which reduce the perceived QoS. For one thing, the cause of the customer's problem may not be the ISP equipment or service, but rather the customer's computer, software, or other equipment. The reduction in QoS can range from simply a slow connection speed, to inability to access a particular service (e.g., email), up to outright failure to connect to the Internet. In a perfect world, these problems would not occur, but reasonable Internet users understand and accept that these problems will occur from time to time. When expected QoS is not met, customers often call on their ISP to fix the problem (even if the cause of the failure is not the ISP). The ISPs that are able to promptly and professionally fix the customer's problems will tend to keep their customers happier. As a result, ISPs that can promptly and professionally address customers' QoS complaints stand to succeed, whereas ISPs that cannot fix these problems in a quick, efficient, low-cost, professional, and thorough manner will tend to lose out to their competition.
Accordingly, ISPs typically provide resources that customers can call on when problems arise. Through these resources, customers can typically notify the ISP of the problem and attempt to get the problem fixed. For example, a telephone number (e.g., a 1-800 number) may be provided with which the customer can contact a technical help desk and talk to a technical support person who can walk the person through a series of steps to attempt to fix the problem. In addition, the ISP may provide a self-help Web site with technical support information. The customer may be able to type in a problem report (also referred to as an “incident” report) to be sent over the network to a technician who will reply with a suggested fix. The ISP may even dispatch a technician to the customer's home.
Unfortunately, these conventional methods have significant limitations. ISPs typically cannot afford to send a technician to every customer's home when they complain of service problems; such an approach would be cost prohibitive. With regard to Web-based support, conventional self-help Web sites often leave customers confused and bewildered, due to their lack of knowledge in computer, software and network technology. Furthermore, customers and support technicians (e.g., telephone-based, chat-based, email-based) often have inadequate or inappropriate tools to address the customer's particular problem. Support technicians typically do not have a complete view of the customer's computer system, and must rely on the customer's knowledge of his/her own system, which may be very limited.
Most frustrating, after all attempts to address a customer's problem fail, the ISP often simply notifies the customer that the service provided by the ISP is functioning properly, and the customer's problem is not the ISP's responsibility. Problems that are not due to the ISP's equipment or service are often referred to as “out-of-scope” with respect to the ISP, and the customer is left stranded to fend for himself, or to chase down other vendors to find a solution.
All of the above situations result in unnecessary costs, wasted time, and all too often a very dissatisfied customer. When overall customer satisfaction drops, the ISP generally experiences a high rate of customer churn (i.e., customers leaving the ISP for a competing ISP), an increased cost of acquiring new customers, and the cost of re-acquiring former customers. In addition, when customer satisfaction falls, the ISP typically has significant resistance among its existing customer base to adopt new, advanced services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, video on demand, music on demand, or other services that might otherwise generate new revenue.
As such, systems and methods are needed to address the above problems and other like issues.